


The Lady Vanishes: Mycroft's Dreams

by Bodhicitta



Series: Mycroft's Dreams [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Big Brother Mycroft, Mycroft Occult, Mycroft Psychic, Mycroft-centric, Protective Mycroft, Sherlock AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-11
Updated: 2014-06-11
Packaged: 2018-01-26 14:46:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1692158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bodhicitta/pseuds/Bodhicitta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something is amiss....</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lady Vanishes: Mycroft's Dreams

He feels a sense of panic.  Something is amiss; She is not...here.  She is not...with us.  He can't even pull up Her name from the depths of his being.  He can feel Her name, feel it pressing on his heart, but it won't make its way to his mouth.

Looking around the room, there is a hole in the universe.  And no one else seems to notice.  Whiskey tumblers clink.  The chief of intelligence for the Belgians sneezes.

Mycroft shifts his weight in the leather chair, blinks hard, rubs his eyes.  He must have nodded off again at the Club.

 ~~~

He has had dreams like this before in which Little Brother disappeared, but _more_ than disappeared; it was as if he did not exist and Mycroft was the only person who realized that Will had _ever_ existed.  There was a hole in the universe and no one else could else it see it, no one else could see that it was getting bigger, blacker, more menacing, and it threatened to swallow Everything.

When he wakes from such dreams, he is in a panic, the panic multiplied by his annoyance with himself that he could have such dreams, and moreover, that he would have an emotional reaction to them.  Lastly, he berated himself that for a millisecond he thought they could be _real_.

He will bolt out of bed, stumble to the bathroom, splash cold water on his face, notice a new wrinkle, vow to smoke less.  Not that he cared for his appearance or even his longevity.  But brain effects and all that.  739 separate chemicals - conveniently added to the nicotine delivery system by American mad scientists - all aiming their toxic projectiles at his neurons, brain cells needed for defending the Kingdom from her foes.

It was times like these, when he woke up with the weight of an elephant on his chest, when all he wanted to say to his brother was, "Do you know who you are?  You are my _brother_ , and I will love you until the sun goes cold, and longer than that, too.  From the moment you forced your way out of our mother, punching a hole in her vaginal wall and almost killing her, my world changed.  I stopped being just me by myself.  I was no longer alone.  And every day you do something to break my heart."

He tries to stop himself from these thoughts, to distract himself.  

A second pass with the razor.  

Tweeze the eyebrows.  

Quick check on the Nikkei 225.  

Text to Anthea.   _Recall Fitzhugh.  Reassign to Cuba.  - MH_

Update grocery list for maid: "Skim milk until further notice, please.  Thank you, Sylvia."

He looks out the window.  Storm clouds.

And then he finds himself texting his brother because there was a niggling suspicion that he might not exist.

_You're alive, I presume? M_

_Go fuck yourself. If you know how. S_

He wants to reply, _Don't you know your name is seared across my heart?  - Your elder brother_

His thumb hovers over the keypad and then he places the phone back on the bathroom counter, sighs, and turns on the shower water.

What Mycroft feared most was not that he would one day find his brother dead in a ditch, a needle hanging out of his arm.  Murdered by the Russian mob.  Poisoned by someone whose case he would not take.  Dismembered, his corpse scattered across four continents (a real fear Mycroft entertained - that he could have to go gather Will's body from different locations in order to bury him somewhat intact so that their mother could have a place to go grieve). 

It's not that he truly feared those scenarios would happen (because to truly believe that one day his baby brother's precious and only life would be stamped out - would actually end - was too awful to admit)...

As the water raced down his body, he realized, what he really feared was that one day he would stop caring.  That his brother would piss him off so much, would reject him one too many times, and he, Mycroft would believe and finally understand - he does not love me.  He loves John Watson, that Adler tramp, the mousy little pathologist, that stupid dog...his landlady....

But not me.  The one who would move heaven and earth for him.  And as the water washed away his weariness and soft edges, he realized, if he knew for a fact that Sherlock did not love him on some level, somewhere deep down inside, even if just a germ of love, a remnant from childhood, that void might snuff out the love Mycroft had for him...

And being that the only thing he loved he _no longer_ loved, his heart would grow cold.  After billions of years of lighting up the world, even a sun can burn out.

And what would that mean for his life, if he could not feel, if he could not love, because his brother had suffocated his capacity to love?  Would he be alone...forever?  To not feel would be the hardest thing.  It might help him do his job better, though, make the hard decisions....yes....200-plus girls in Nigeria...a plane loaded with technological weapons careening out of control over the subcontinent...

He leaned against the tiled wall so he could sob without slipping on the slick tub floor.   _Thank God for the reinforced sound-batting in the walls between me and the next flat._

 ***

And like most dreams, he forgot it.  He could never remember dreams more than thirty minutes, an hour at most...there were at least seven world crises that required his utmost attention.  How best to support the Ukrainians without estranging their friends in Moscow, the ones biding their time til they could "deal with" Putin; operatives in Thailand - having a bear of a time getting in touch with them under martial law, the internet down... Nigeria to think about - providing covert support to the Americans closing in on Boku Haram (had to get those girls out, insupportable, not cricket what they were doing down there..he had been thinking about this for weeks now, those girls, those girls....). And the Korean peninsula always simmering on the back burner, ready to spill over and scald all of Asia...

The plane at the bottom on the Indian Ocean.  Need to recover those chips before saltwater corrodes them. 

But later, he remembered the dream.  Sitting at his desk, about to sign off on a kill order....he could not be sure whether or not he had ever had a brother.  

He made Anthea arrange to have him run into Sherlock at a coffee shop.  

~~~

As Sherlock balanced his teacup atop a stack of books, he muttered, "So, whazzup with that crazy text this morning?"

Mycroft legitimately could not remember texting Little Brother, nor the reason why the dream had so disturbed him.  

After pleasantries and paying for his perpetually insolvent brother's tea, Mycroft ventured to ask about Molly.

Sherlock, irritated, answered, "Don't trouble yourself about my personal life."

"Sorry, just checking on your...friends." 

"Friends...I've never heard you call it that before."

"Call what, what?"

"Molly.  Heroin.  Coke.  Blue heaven.  Liquid X.  Medusa, discorama, pink robots, kit kat.  You've called it lots of things.  A _'scourge.'_  My _'downfall.'_  Never my _'friend.'_  That's a new one.  Ugh, have you been reading self-help material?"  Sherlock sipped his tea, opened a book and proceeded to ignore his brother.

"Molly Hoo..."  Mycroft almost said her full name, but he stopped himself.  A quick inhalation of air.  He blinked hard.

"Besides," Sherlock whined, "I don't do 'Molly.'  I'm not a 14 year old pop star with a penchant for sticking my tongue out and twerking."  

Sherlock dumped half a jar of sugar in his tea.  "You're very quiet, Brother mine.  Headache?  You're rubbing your temples like your cranium is about to give birth to Aphrodite."

***

Mycroft walks over to St. Bart's.  He confirms.  She is gone.  She never _was_.

And something in him knows she won't be the last.  To just... _never be._

The streets of London are glazed in a light sheen.  So glad to have his umbrella with him.  Many times had had imagined a small woman walking next to him, how lovely, to have her tiny frame sheltering with him as they amble slowly through the alleys and hidden places he could show her.  Her eyes, warm and inviting, looking up at him affectionately.   **  
**

_He can't remember her name now, or why he had wandered to St. Bart's to begin with._


End file.
